CHAPTER XVIII
On the day following Constance's visit to the Boar's Hill cottage shewrote to Radowitz:--
"DEAR OTTO,--I am going to ask you not to raise the subject you spoke of yesterday to me again between us. I am afraid I should find my visits a pain instead of a joy, if you did so. And Mrs. Mulholland and I want to come so much--sometimes alone, and sometimes together. We want to be mother and sister as much as we can, and you will let us! We know very well that we are poor painted things compared with real mothers and sisters. Still we should love to do our best--_I_ should--if you'll let me!"
To which Otto replied:--
"DEAR CONSTANCE,--(That's impudence, but you told me!)--I'll hold my tongue--though I warn you I shall only think the more. But you shan't have any cause to punish me by not coming. Good heavens!--if you didn't come!
"The coast is always clear here between two and four. I get my walk in the morning."
Two or three days a week accordingly, Constance, or Mrs. Mulholland, orboth took their way to the cottage. They did all that women with softhearts can do for a sick man. Mrs. Mulholland managed the servants, andenquired into the food. Connie brought books and flowers, and all theOxford gossip she could collect. Their visit was the brightness of theboy's day, and thanks to them, many efforts were made to soften hiscalamity. The best musical talent that Oxford could furnish was eager toserve him; and a well-known orchestra was only waiting for thecompletion of his symphony and the result of his examination to producethe symphony in the hall of Marmion.
Meanwhile Connie very rarely saw Falloden--except in connection eitherwith Otto's health, or with the "Orpheus," as to which Falloden was inconstant communication with the inventor, one Auguste Chaumart, livingin a garret on the heights of Montmartre; while Constance herself wascarrying on an eager correspondence with friends of her own or herparents, in Paris, with regard to the "records" which were to make therepertory of the Orpheus. The automatic piano--or piano-player--whichsome years later became the pianola, was in those days rapidlydeveloping. The difference between it and the Orpheus lay in the factthat the piano-player required hands and feet of flesh and blood foranything more than a purely mechanical rendering of the music providedby the rolls; while in the Orpheus, expression, accent, interpretation,as given by the best pianists of the day, had been already registered inthe cylinders.
On the pianola, or what preceded it--then as now--the player providedhis own rendering. But the Orpheus, the precursor also of types thathave since been greatly perfected, was played by an electricalmechanism, and the audience was intended to listen to Chopin orBeethoven, to Schumann or Brahms, as interpreted by the famous playersof the moment, without any intervening personality.
These things are very familiar to our generation. In the eighties, theywere only a vision and a possibility, and Falloden's lavish expenditurewas in fact stimulating one of the first inventors.
But Connie also was playing an important part. Both Lord and LadyRisborough had possessed devoted friends in Paris, and Connie had madeothers of her own among the young folk with whom she had danced andflirted and talked during a happy spring with her parents in the AvenueMarceau. She had set these playfellows of hers to work, and with mostbrilliant success. Otto's story, as told by her vivacious letters, hadgone the round. No woman of twice her age could have told it moreadroitly. Otto appeared as the victim of an unfortunate accident in acollege frolic; Falloden as the guardian friend; herself, as hislieutenant. It touched the romantic sense, the generous heart of musicalParis. There were many who remembered Otto's father and mother and themusical promise of the bright-haired boy. The Polish colony in Paris, asurvival from the tragic days of Poland's exodus under the revolutionaryskies of the thirties and the sixties, had been appealed to, and bothPolish and French musicians were already in communication with Chaumart,and producing records under his direction. The young Polish marvel ofthe day--Paderewski--had been drawn in, and his renderings of Chopin'sfinest work were to provide the bulk of the rolls. Connie's dear oldPolish teacher, himself a composer, was at work on a grouping offolk-songs from Poland and Lithuania--the most characteristic utteranceof a martyred people.
"They are songs, _chere petite_," wrote the old man--"of revolt, ofexile, and of death. There is no other folk-song like them in theworld, just as there is no history in the world like Poland's. Your poorfriend knows them all--has known them all from his childhood. They willspeak to him of his torn country. He will hear in them the cry of theWhite Eagle--the White Eagle of Poland--as she soars wounded andbleeding over the southern plains, or sinks dying into the marshes andforests of Lithuania. It is in these songs that we Poles listen to thevery heart-beats of our outraged country. Our songs--our music--ourpoets--our memories:--as a nation that is all we have--except the faithin us that never dies. _Hinc surrectura!_ Yes, she shall rise again, ourPoland! Our hope is in God, and in the human heart, the humanconscience, that He has made. Comfort your friend. He has lost much,poor boy!--but he has still ears to hear, a brain, an imagination toconceive. Let him work still for music and for Poland--they will someday reward him!"
And as a last contribution, a young French pianist, rising rapidly intofame both as a virtuoso and a composer, was writing specially a seriesof variations on the lovely theme of the "Heynal"--that traditionalhorn-song, played every hour in the ears of Cracow, from the tower ofPanna Marya--of which Otto had spoken to Falloden.
But all these things were as yet hidden from Otto. Falloden andConstance corresponded about them, in letters that anybody might haveread, which had behind them, nevertheless, a secret and growing force ofemotion. Even Mrs. Mulholland, who was rapidly endearing herself both toConstance and Radowitz, could only guess at what was going on, and whenshe did guess, held her tongue. But her relations with Falloden, whichat the beginning of his residence in the cottage had been of thecoldest, gradually became less strained. To his own astonishment, hefound the advice of this brusque elderly woman so important to him thathe looked eagerly for her coming, and obeyed her with a docility whichamazed himself and her. The advice concerned, of course, merely thesmall matters of daily life bearing on Otto's health and comfort, andwhen the business was done, Falloden disappeared.
But strangely amenable, and even humble as he might appear in theseaffairs to those who remembered his haughty days in college, for bothConstance and Mrs. Mulholland quite another fact emerged from theirexperience of the cottage household during these weeks:--simplythis--that whatever other people might do or be, Falloden was steadily,and perhaps unconsciously, becoming master of the situation, theindispensable and protecting power of Otto's life.
How he did it remained obscure. But Mrs. Mulholland at least--out of arich moral history--guessed that what they saw in the Boar's Hillcottage was simply the working out of the old spiritual paradox--thatthere is a yielding which is victory, and a surrender which is power. Itseemed to her often that Radowitz was living in a constant state ofhalf-subdued excitement, produced by the strange realisation that he andhis life had become so important to Falloden that the differences oftraining and temperament between them, and all the little daily rubs, nolonger counted; that he existed, so to speak, that Fallodenmight--through him--escape the burden of his own remorse. The hard,strong, able man, so much older than himself in character, if not inyears, the man who had bullied and despised him, was now becoming hisservant, in the sense in which Christ was the "servant" of his brethren.Not with any conscious Christian intention--far from it; but still undera kind of mysterious compulsion. The humblest duties, the most trivialanxieties, where Radowitz was concerned, fell, week by week,increasingly to Falloden's portion. A bad or a good night--appetite orno appetite--a book that Otto liked--a visit that amused him--anythingthat for the moment contented the starved musical sense in Otto, thatbrought out his gift, and his joy in it--anything that, for the moment,enabled him to forget and evade his injuries--these became, for Fallodenalso, the
leading events of his own day. He was reading hard for hisfellowship, and satisfying various obscure needs by taking as muchviolent exercise as possible; but there was going on in him, all thetime, an intense spiritual ferment, connected with Constance Bledlow onthe one side, and Otto Radowitz on the other.
Meanwhile--what was not so evident to this large-hearted observer--Ottowas more than willing--he burned--to play his part. All that is mysticaland passionate in the soul of a Polish Catholic, had been stirred in himby his accident, his growing premonition of short life, the bitternessof his calamity, the suddenness of his change of heart towards Falloden.
"My future is wrecked. I shall never live to be old. I shall never be agreat musician. But I mean to live long enough to make Constance happy!She shall talk of me to her children. And I shall watch overher--perhaps--from another world."
These thoughts, and others like them, floated by day and night throughthe boy's mind; and he wove them into the symphony he was writing.Tragedy, passion, melody--these have been the Polish heritage in music;they breathe through the Polish peasant songs, as through the genius ofa Chopin; they are bound up with the long agony of Polish history, withthe melancholy and monotony of the Polish landscape. They spoke againthrough the beautiful thwarted gift of this boy of twenty, through hisforeboding of early death, and through that instinctive exercise of hiscreative gift, which showed itself not in music alone, but in theshaping of two lives--Falloden's and Connie's.
* * * * *
And Constance too was living and learning, with the intensity that comesof love and pity and compunction. She was dropping all her spoilt-childairs; and the bower-bird adornments, with which she had filled herlittle room in Medburn House, had been gradually cleared away, to Nora'sgreat annoyance, till it was almost as bare as Nora's own. Amid themisty Oxford streets, and the low-ceiled Oxford rooms, she was playedupon by the unseen influences of that "august place," where both thegreat and the forgotten dead are always at work, shaping the life of thepresent. In those days Oxford was still praising "famous men and thefathers who begat" her. Their shades still walked her streets. Pusey wasnot long dead. Newman, the mere ghost of himself, had just preached atremulous last sermon within her bounds, returning as a kind ofspiritual Odysseus for a few passing hours to the place where he hadonce reigned as the most adored son of Oxford. Thomas Hill Green, withthe rugged face, and the deep brown eyes, and the look that madepretence and cowardice ashamed, was dead, leaving a thought and ateaching behind him that his Oxford will not let die. Matthew Arnold hadyet some years to live and could occasionally be seen at Balliol or atAll Souls; while Christ Church and Balliol still represented the rivalcentres of that great feud between Liberal and Orthodox which hadconvulsed the University a generation before.
In Balliol, there sat a chubby-faced, quiet-eyed man, with very whitehair, round whom the storms of orthodoxy had once beaten, like thesurges on a lighthouse; and at Christ Church and in St. Mary's thebeautiful presence and the wonderful gift of Liddon kept the old firesburning in pious hearts.
And now into this old, old place, with its thick soil of dead lives anddeeds, there had come a new seed, as to which no one could tell how itwould flower. Women students were increasing every term in Oxford.Groups of girl graduates in growing numbers went shyly through thestreets, knowing that they had still to justify their presence in thishitherto closed world--made by men for men. There were many hostile eyesupon them, watching for mistakes. But all the generous forces in Oxfordwere behind them. The ablest men in the University were teaching womenhow to administer--how to organise. Some lecture-rooms were opening tothem; some still entirely declined to admit them. And here and therewere persons who had a clear vision of the future to which was trendingthis new eagerness of women to explore regions hitherto forbidden themin the House of Life.
Connie had no such vision, but she had a boundless curiosity and athrilling sense of great things stirring in the world. Under Nora's leadshe had begun to make friends among the women students, and to find herway into their little bed-sitting-rooms at tea time. They all seemed toher superhumanly clever; and superhumanly modest. She had been broughtup indeed by two scholars; but examinations dazzled and appalled her.How they were ever passed, she could not imagine. She looked at thegirls who had passed them with awe, quite unconscious the while of theglamour she herself possessed for these untravelled students, as onefamiliar from her childhood with the sacred places of history--Rome,Athens, Florence, Venice, Sicily. She had seen, she had trodden; andquiet eyes--sometimes spectacled--would flame, while her easy talkran on.
But all the time there were very critical notions in her, hidden deepdown.
"Do they never think about a _man_?" some voice in her seemed to beasking. "As for me, I am always thinking about a man!" And the colourwould flush into her cheeks, as she meekly asked for another cup of tea.
Sometimes she would go with Nora to the Bodleian, and sit patientlybeside her while Nora copied Middle-English poetry from an earlymanuscript, worth a king's ransom. Nora got sevenpence a "folio," ofseventy-two words, for her work. Connie thought the pay scandalous forso much learning; but Nora laughed at her, and took far more pleasure inthe small cheque she received at the end of term from the UniversityPress than Connie in her quarterly dividends.
But Connie knew very well by this time that Nora was not wholly absorbedin Middle English. Often, as they emerged from the Bodleian to go hometo lunch, they would come across Sorell hurrying along the Broad, hismaster's gown floating behind him. And he would turn his fine asceticface towards them, and wave his hand to them from the other side of thestreet. And Connie would flash a look at Nora,--soft, quick,malicious--of which Nora was well aware.
But Connie rarely said a word. She was handling the situation indeedwith great discretion; though with an impetuous will. She herself hadwithdrawn from the Greek lessons, on the plea that she was attendingsome English history lectures; that she must really find out who foughtthe battle of Hastings; and was too lazy to do anything else. Sometimesshe would linger in the schoolroom till Sorell arrived, and then hewould look at her wistfully, when she prepared to depart, as though tosay--"Was this what I bargained for?"
But she always laughed and went. And presently as she crossed the hallagain, and heard animated voices in the schoolroom, her brown eyes wouldshow a merry satisfaction.
Meanwhile Nora was growing thinner and handsomer day by day. She wasshedding awkwardness without any loss of that subacid sincerity that washer charm. Connie, as much as she dared, took her dressing in hand. Shewas never allowed to give a thing; but Annette's fingers were quick andclever, and Nora's Spartan garb was sometimes transformed by them underthe orders of a coaxing or audacious Constance. The mere lifting of theload of care had let the young plant shoot. So that many persons passingEwen Hooper's second daughter in the street would turn round now to lookat her in surprise. Was that really the stout, podgy schoolgirl, who hadalready, by virtue of her strong personality, made a certain impressionin the university town? People had been vaguely sorry for her; orvaguely thought of her as plain but good. Alice of course was pretty;Nora had the virtues. And now here she was, bursting into good looksmore positive than her sister's.
The girl's heart indeed was young at last, for the neighbourhood ofConnie was infectious. The fairy-godmothering of that young woman wasgoing finely. It was the secret hope at the centre of her own life whichwas playing like captured sunshine upon all the persons about her. Herenergy was prodigious. Everything to do with money matters had beenpractically settled between her and Sorell and Uncle Ewen; and settledin Connie's way, expressed no doubt in business form. And now she wasinsisting firmly on the holiday visit to Rome, in spite of many protestsfrom Uncle Ewen and Nora. It was a promise, she declared.Rome--Rome--was their fate. She wrote endless letters, enquiring forrooms, and announcing their coming to her old friends. Uncle Ewen soonhad the startled impression that all Rome was waiting for them, and thatthey could never live u
p to it.
Finally, Connie persuaded them to settle on rooms in a well-known smallhotel, overlooking the garden-front of the Palazzo Barberini, where shehad grown up. She wrote to the innkeeper, Signor B., "a very old friendof mine," who replied that the "_amici_" of the "_distintissimasignorina_" should be most tenderly looked after. As for the contessasand marchesas who wrote, eagerly promising their "dearest Constance"that they would be kind to her relations, they were many; and when EwenHooper said nervously that it was clear he must take out both afrock-coat and dress clothes, Constance laughed and said, "Not atall!--Signer B. will lend you any thing you want,"--a remark which, inthe ears of the travellers to be, threw new and unexpected light on thefunctions of an Italian innkeeper. Meanwhile she piled up guide-books,she gathered maps; and she taught both her uncle and Nora Italian. Andso long as she was busied with such matters she seemed the gayest ofcreatures, and would go singing and laughing about the house.
In another old house in Oxford, too, her coming made delight. She spentmany long hours beside the Master of Beaumont's fire, gathering freshlight on the ways of scholarship and scholars. The quarrels of thelearned had never hitherto come her way. Her father had never quarrelledwith anybody. But the Master--poor great man!--had quarrelled with somany people! He had missed promotions which should have been his; he hadmade discoveries of which others had got the credit; and he kept a quiteamazing stock of hatreds in some pocket of his vast intelligence.Constance would listen at first to the expression of them in an awedsilence. Was it possible the world contained such mean and treacherousmonsters? And why did it matter so much to a man who kneweverything?--who held all the classics and all the Renaissance in thehollow of his hand, to whom "Latin was no more _difficile_, than to ablackbird 'tis to whistle"? Then, gradually, she began to have thecourage to laugh; to try a little soft teasing of her new friend andmentor, who was at once so wonderful and so absurd. And the Master boreit well, could indeed never have too much of her company; while hiswhite-haired sister beamed at the sight of her. She became the child ofa childless house, and when Lady Langmoor sent her peremptoryinvitations to this or that country mansion where she would meet "somecharming young men," Connie would reply--"Best thanks, dear AuntLangmoor--but I am very happy here--and comfortably in love with agentleman on the sunny side of seventy. Please don't interfere!"
Only with Herbert Pryce was she ever thorny in these days. She could notforgive him that it was not till his appointment at the ConservativeCentral Office, due to Lord Glaramara's influence, was actually signedand sealed that he proposed to Alice. Till the goods had been delivered,he never finally committed himself. Even Nora had underrated hisprudence. But at last one evening he arrived at Medburn House afterdinner with the look of one whose mind is magnificently made up. Bycommon consent, the drawing-room was abandoned to him and Alice, andwhen they emerged, Alice held her head triumphantly, and her lover wasall jocosity and self-satisfaction.
"She really is a dear little thing," he said complacently to Connie,when the news had been told and excitement subsided. "We shall docapitally."
"_Enfin?_" said Connie, with the old laugh in her eyes. "You are quitesure?"
He looked at her uneasily.
"It never does to hurry these things," he said, rather pompously. "Iwanted to feel I could give her what she had a right to expect. We oweyou a great deal, Lady Constance--or--perhaps now--I may call youConstance?"
Constance winced, and pointedly avoided giving him leave. But forAlice's sake, she held her tongue. The wedding was to be hurried on, andMrs. Hooper, able for once to buy new frocks with a clear conscience,and possessed of the money to pay for them, was made so happy by thebustle of the trousseau that she fell in love with her prospectiveson-in-law as the cause of it. Ewen Hooper meanwhile watched him withmildly shrewd eyes, deciding once more in his inner mind thatmathematicians were an inferior race.
Not even to Nora--only to Mrs. Mulholland, did Constance ever lift theveil, during these months. She was not long in succumbing to the queercharm of that lovable and shapeless person; and in the littledrawing-room in St. Giles, the girl of twenty would spend winterevenings, at the feet of her new friend, passing through various stagesof confession; till one night, Mrs. Mulholland lifted the small face,with her own large hand, and looked mockingly into the brown eyes:
"Out with it, my dear! You are in love with Douglas Falloden!"
Connie said nothing. Her little chin did not withdraw itself, nor didher eyes drop. But a film of tears rushed into them.
The truth was that in this dark wintry Oxford, and its neighbouringcountry, there lurked a magic for Connie which in the high summer pompsit had never possessed. Once or twice, in the distance of a windingstreet--on some football ground in the Parks--in the gallery of St.Mary's on Sunday, Constance caught sight, herself unseen, of the tallfigure and the curly head. Such glimpses made the fever of her younglife. They meant far more to passion than her occasional meetings withFalloden at the Boar's Hill cottage. And there were other points ofcontact. At the end of November, for instance, came the MertonFellowship. Falloden won it, in a brilliant field; and Connie contrivedto know all she wanted to know as to his papers, and his rivals. Afterthe announcement of his success, she trod on air. Finally she allowedherself to send him a little note of congratulation--very short andalmost formal. He replied in the same tone.
Two days later, Falloden went over to Paris to see for himself thecondition of the Orpheus, and to arrange for its transport to England.He was away for nearly a week, and on his return called at once inHolywell, to report his visit. Nora was with Connie in the drawing-roomwhen he was announced; and a peremptory look forbade her to slip away.She sat listening to the conversation.
Was this really Douglas Falloden--this grave, courteous man--without atrace of the "blood" upon him? He seemed to her years older than he hadbeen in May, and related, for the first time, to the practical every-dayworld. This absorption too in Otto Radowitz and his affairs--incredible!He and Connie first eagerly discussed certain domestic details of thecottage--the cook, the food, the draughts, the arrangements to be madefor Otto's open-air treatment which the doctors were now insistingon--with an anxious minuteness! Nora could hardly keep her face straightin the distance--they were so like a pair of crooning housewives. Thenhe began on his French visit, sitting sideways on his chair, his elbowon the back of it, and his hand thrust into his curly mass ofhair--handsomer, thought Nora, than ever. And there was Connielistening spell-bound in a low chair opposite, her delicate pale profiledistinct against the dark panelling of the room, her eyes fixed on him.Nora's perplexed eyes travelled from one to the other.
As to the story of the Orpheus and its inventor, both girls hung uponit. Falloden had tracked Auguste Chaumart to his garret in Montmartre,and had found in him one of those marvellous French workmen, inheritorsof the finest technical tradition in the world, who are the true sons ofthe men who built and furnished and carved Versailles, and therebyrevolutionised the minor arts of Europe. A small pinched fellow!--with asickly wife and children sharing his tiny workshop, and a brain teemingwith inventions, of which the electric piano, forerunner of theWelte-Mignons of later days, was but the chief among many. He had spenta fortune upon it, could get no capitalist to believe in it, and no firmto take it up. Then Falloden's astonishing letter and offer of funds,based on Radowitz's report--itself the echo of a couple of letters fromParis--had encouraged the starving dreamer to go on.
Falloden reproduced the scene, as described to him by the chief actor init, when the inventor announced to his family that the thing wasaccomplished, the mechanism perfect, and how that very night they shouldhear Chopin's great Fantasia, Op. 49, played by its invisible hands.
The moment came. Wife and children gathered, breathless. Chaumart turnedon the current, released the machinery.
"_Ecoutez, mes enfants! Ecoutez, Henriette_!"
They listened--with ears, with eyes, with every faculty strained to itsutmost. And nothing happened!--posi
tively nothing--beyond a few wheezingor creaking sounds. The haggard inventor in despair chased everybody outof the room, and sat looking at the thing, wondering whether to smashit, or kill himself. Then an idea struck him. In feverish haste he tookthe whole mechanism to pieces again, sitting up all night. And as themorning sun rose, he discovered in the very heart of the creature, towhich by now he attributed an uncanny and independent life, the mostelementary blunder--a vital connection missed between thepower-supplying mechanism and the cylinders containing the records. Heset it right; and nearly dead with fatigue and excitement, unlocked hisdoor, and called his family back. Then what triumph! What falling oneach other's necks--and what a _dejeuner_ in the Palais Royal--childrenand all--paid for by the inventor's last napoleon!
All this Falloden told, and told well.
Connie could not restrain her pleasure as he came to the end of histale. She clapped her hands in delight.
"And when--when will it come!"
"I think Christmas will see it here. I've only told you half--and thelesser half. It's you that have done most--far the most."
And he took out a little note-book, running through the list of visitshe had paid to her friends and correspondents in Paris, among whom therolls were being collected, under Chaumart's direction. The Orpheusalready had a large musical library of its own--renderings by some ofthe finest artists of some of the noblest music. Beethoven, Bach, Liszt,Chopin, Brahms, Schumann--all Otto's favourite things, as far as Conniehad been able to discover them, were in the catalogue.
Suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. She put down the note-book, andspoke in a low voice, as though her girlish joy in their common secrethad suddenly dropped.
"It must give him some pleasure--it must!" she said, slowly, but asthough she asked a question.
Falloden did not reply immediately. He rose from his seat. Nora, under aquick impulse, gathered up a letter she had been writing, and slippedout of the room.
"At least"--he looked away from her, straight out of the window--"Isuppose it will please him--that we tried to do something."
"How is he--really?"
He shrugged his shoulders. Connie was standing, looking down, one handon her chair. The afternoon had darkened; he could see only her whitebrow, and the wealth of her hair which the small head carried solightly. Her childishness, her nearness, made his heart beat. Suddenlyshe lifted her eyes.
"Do you know"--it seemed to him her voice choked a little--"howmuch--you matter to him? Mrs. Mulholland and I couldn't keep himcheerful while you were away."
He laughed.
"Well, I have only just escaped a catastrophe to-day."
She looked alarmed.
"How?"
"I offended Bateson, and he gave notice!" Connie's "Oh!" was a sound ofconsternation. Bateson, the ex-scout had become a most efficient andcomfortable valet, and Otto depended greatly upon him.
"It's all right," said Falloden quickly. "I grovelled. I ate all thehumble-pie I could think of. It was of course impossible to let him go.Otto can't do without him. I seem somehow to have offended his dignity."
"They have so much!" said Connie, laughing, but rather unsteadily.
"One lives and learns." The tone of the words was serious--a littleanxious. Then the speaker took up his hat. "But I'm not good at managingtouchy people. Good night."
Her hand passed into his. The little fingers were cold; he could nothelp enclosing them in a warm, clinging grasp. The firelit room, thedark street outside, and the footsteps of the passers-by--they allmelted from consciousness. They only saw and heard each other.
In another minute the outer door had closed behind them. Connie was leftstill in the same attitude, one hand on the chair, her head drooping,her heart in a dream.
Falloden ran through the streets, choosing the by-ways rather than thethoroughfares. The air was frosty, the December sky clear and starlit,above the blue or purple haze, pierced with lights, that filled thelower air; through which the college fronts, the distant spires anddomes showed vaguely--as beautiful "suggestions"--"notes"--from whichall detail had disappeared. He was soon on Folly Bridge, and hurrying upthe hill he pushed straight on over the brow to the Berkshire side,leaving the cottage to his right. Fold after fold of dim wooded countryfell away to the south of the ridge; bare branching trees were allabout him; a patch of open common in front where bushes ofwinter-blossoming gorse defied the dusk. It was the English winter atits loveliest--still, patient, expectant--rich in beauties of its ownthat summer knows nothing of. But Falloden was blind to it. His pulseswere full of riot. She had been so near to him--and yet so far away--sosweet, yet so defensive. His whole nature cried out fiercely for her. "Iwant her!--_I want her!_ And I believe she wants me. She's not afraid ofme now--she turns to me. What keeps us apart? Nothing that ought toweigh for a moment against our double happiness!"
He turned and walked stormily homewards. Then as he saw the roof andwhite walls of the cottage through the trees his mood wavered--and fell.There was a life there which he had injured--a life that now depended onhim. He knew that, more intimately than Connie knew it, often as he haddenied it to her. And he was more convinced than Otto himself--thoughnever by word or manner had he ever admitted it for a moment--that theboy was doomed--not immediately, but after one of those pitifulstruggles which have their lulls and pauses, but tend all the sameinevitably to one end.
"And as long as he lives, I shall look after him," he thought, feelingthat strange compulsion on him again, and yielding to it with mingledeagerness and despair.
For how could he saddle Connie's life with such a charge--or darken itwith such a tragedy?
Impossible! But that was only one of many reasons why he should not takeadvantage of her through their common pity for Otto. In his own eyes hewas a ruined man, and having resolutely refused to live upon hismother, his pride was little more inclined to live upon a wife, common,and generally applauded, though the practice might be. About fivethousand pounds had been saved for himself out of the wreck; of which hewould certainly spend a thousand, before all was done, on the Orpheus.The rest would just suffice to launch him as a barrister. His motherwould provide for the younger children. Her best jewels indeed had beenalready sold and invested as a dowry for Nelly, who showed signs ofengaging herself to a Scotch laird. But Falloden was joint guardian ofTrix and Roger, and must keep a watchful eye on them, now that hismother's soft incompetence had been more plainly revealed than ever byher widow-hood. He chafed under the duties imposed, and yet fulfilledthem--anxiously and well--to the amazement of his relations.
In addition he had his way to make in the world.
But Constance had only to be a little more seen and known in Englishsociety to make the most brilliant match that any scheming chaperoncould desire, Falloden was aware through every pulse of her fastdeveloping beauty. And although no great heiress, as heiresses now go,she would ultimately inherit a large amount of scattered money, inaddition to what she already possessed. The Langmoors would certainlyhave her out of Oxford at the earliest possible moment--and smallblame to them.
In all this he reasoned as a man of his class and antecedents was likelyto reason--only with a bias against himself. To capture Connie, throughOtto, before she had had any other chances of marriage, seemed to him amean and dishonorable thing.
If he had only time--time to make his career!
But there would be no time given him. As soon as her Risboroughrelations got hold of her, Constance would marry directly.
He went back to the cottage in a sombre mood. Then, as Otto proved to bein the same condition, Falloden had to shake off his own depression asquickly as possible, and spend the evening in amusing and distractingthe invalid.
* * * * *
But Fortune, which had no doubt enjoyed the nips she had inflicted on sotempting a victim, was as determined as before to take her owncapricious way.
By this time it was the last week of term, and a sharp frost had set inover the Thames V
alley. The floods were out north and south of the city,and a bright winter sun shone all day over the glistening ice-plains,and the throng of skaters.
At the beginning of the frost came the news of Otto's success in hismusical examination; and at a Convocation, held shortly after it, he puton his gown as Bachelor of Music. The Convocation House was crowded tosee him admitted to his degree; and the impression produced, as he madehis way through the throng towards the Vice-Chancellor, by the frail,boyish figure, the startling red-gold hair, the black sling, and thehaunting eyes, was long remembered in Oxford. Then Sorell claimed him,and hurried him up to London for doctors and consultations since theeffort of the examination had left him much exhausted.
Meanwhile the frost held, and all Oxford went skating. Constanceperformed indifferently, and both Nora and Uncle Ewen were bent uponimproving her. But there were plenty of cavaliers to attend her,whenever she appeared, either on Port Meadow or the Magdalen floodwater; and her sound youth delighted physically in the exercise, in theplay of the brisk air about her face, and the alternations of the brightwinter day--from the pale blue of its morning skies, hung behind thesnow-sprinkled towers and spires of Oxford, down to the red of sunset,and the rise of those twilight mists which drew the fair city gentlyback into the bosom of the moonlit dark.
But all the time the passionate sense in her watched and waited. The"mere living" was good--"yet was there better than it!"
And on the second afternoon, out of the distance of Magdalen meadow, aman came flying towards her as it seemed on the wings of the wind.Falloden drew up beside her, hovering on his skates, a splendid visionin the dusk, ease and power in every look and movement.
"Let me take you a run with the wind," he said, holding out his hand."You shan't come to any harm."
Her eyes and her happy flush betrayed her. She put her hand in his, andaway they flew, up the course of the Cherwell, through the floodedmeadows. It seemed the very motion of gods; the world fell away. Then,coming back, they saw Magdalen Tower, all silver and ebony under therising moon, and the noble arch of the bridge. The world was alltransmuted. Connie's only hold on the kind, common earth seemed to liein this strong hand to which she clung; and yet in that touch, thathold, lay the magic that was making life anew.
But soon the wind had risen gustily, and was beating in her face,catching at her breath.
"This is too cold for you!" said Falloden abruptly; and wheeling round,he had soon guided her into a more sheltered place, and there, easilygliding up and down, soul and sense fused in one delight, they passedone of those hours for which there is no measure in our dull human time.They would not think of the past; they shrank from imagining the future.There were shadows and ghosts behind them, and ahead of them; but thesheer present mastered them.
Before they parted, Falloden told his companion that the Orpheus wouldarrive from Paris the following day with a trio of French workmen to setit up. The electric installation was already in place. Everything wouldbe ready by the evening. The instrument was to be placed behind a screenin the built-out room, once a studio, which Falloden had turned into alibrary. Otto rarely or never went there. The room looked north, and he,whose well-being hung upon sunshine, disliked it. But there was no otherplace for the Orpheus in the little cottage, and Falloden who had beengetting new and thick curtains for the windows, improving thefire-place, and adding some armchairs, was eagerly hopeful that he couldturn it into a comfortable music-room for Otto in the winter evenings,while he--if necessary--read his law elsewhere.
"Will you come for a rehearsal to-morrow?" he asked her. "Otto comesback the day after."
"No, no! I won't hear anything, not a note--till he comes! But is hestrong enough?" she added wistfully. Strong enough, she meant, to bearagitation and surprise. But Falloden reported that Sorell kneweverything that was intended, and approved. Otto had been very listlessand depressed in town; a reaction no doubt from his spurt of work beforethe musical exam. Sorell thought the pleasure of the gift might rousehim, and gild the return to Oxford.